RTÉ’s traditional music TV series The Full Set,
devoted usually to duos, has featured some remarkable performances, but perhaps
none as startling or as inspirational as the show devoted to the young Dublin
pairing of fiddler Liam O’Connor and uilleann piper Seán McKeon. Their sheer
brio, synchronicity and technical wizardry (all founded upon their backgrounds
as members of two of their city’s most renowned musical families) left
traditional music lovers both gobsmacked and desirous for more.

So here’s their debut CD, released on the Irish uilleann
pipers’ association’s label itself (and that’s real kudos from their peers)
and, my, it’s a corker! Thankfully absent from accompaniment of the
strumming/plucking kind (though with occasional tasteful percussion – and I
thought I’d never use those two words together in an Irish context) and
sensitively recorded by John Blake, this is an album whose utter quality belies
its protagonists’ ages.

It’s not just the superb unison playing that’s paramount
here (listen to the reels Mrs. Galvin’s/Billy Connor’s as an
example) or the fact that oft-times (as on the jig The Drunken Gauger)
that the duo’s instruments seem to blend into one, but the absolute joy that
inhabits their music which makes this such a splendid album. Add to that some
sparkling solo tracks, such as Liam’s The Duke of Leinster or Seán’s The
Lady’s Bonnet/The Pinch of Snuff (a tour de force in terms of
drones and regulators), and this has to be one of the most successful and
utterly memorable Irish recordings of the last thirty years.